Report of the Executive Committee 37 



upward to the study of the winds and clouds, and so again to the rivers 

 and oceans. Each child writes its own geography, beginning with a 

 plan of the room, the house, the garden, the local roads, hills, streams, 

 and broadening, with the latter, till they reach and cross the sundering 

 seas, where strange nations will introduce naturally to the study of their 

 languages when the need arises. 



"The study of geography, moulded by geology and climate, deepens 

 to that of present social and political conditions, and these will be seen 

 to be conditioned in turn by the remote past, to explain which we will 

 turn to history, and, still keeping to the known and working towards 

 the unknown, try to reconstruct in all its manifold aspects the past life 

 of our parish. Here, again, the utmost advantage is taken of the 

 proximity of a historic town, stronghold, or church. No matter at 

 what point it touches national history, it may be dove-tailed into that of 

 our parish; and forwards from that point to the present, and backwards 

 to prehistoric man, it is only a question of suitable presentment of the 

 material and some healthy (and wisely encouraged) curiosity on the part 

 of the child. 



** Geography also leads to commerce, and commerce to arithmetic, 

 which shall deal with concrete problems from the first — concrete, as 

 the only form in which the adult knows them ; and problems, as 

 developing the reasoning faculty rather than the merely imitative and 

 memorizing powers. Every local map or plan made is a lesson in 

 actual mensuration, every rabbit-hutch constructed, a combined exercise 

 — first of geometry and then careful computation of material and cost, — 

 but the mental faculties of the young have no place fo7- abstractions ^ and 

 their reasoning powers can best be developed on the things they can see 

 and handle. ^^ 



In an intermediate position between such schools and 

 those in which Nature-study is not organized at all, and de- 

 pends upon the school natural history society, comes a larger 

 number in which the educational value of outdoor obser- 

 vations, though dependent upon the voluntary efforts of the 

 pupils, receives from the school authorities, encouragement 

 and recognition. As a type of boys' schools in this connec- 

 tion Bootham School, York, may be taken, and its aims are 

 quoted as follows : — 



** The exhibit of Bootham School Natural History Society shows 

 what may be done in leisure hours at a boys' boarding-school. The 



